Pop goes mobile

From New Faces talent show winner to mobile telephony guru, Jonathan Jowitt of Orange UK reveals how a background in pop music is now de rigueur in ring tones.

Plain Words reports

When Jonathan Jowitt first stepped out on to the stage of the 1970s talent show New Faces with his band Wild Affair, little did he know they would win and go on to secure a record deal with Phonogram (now Polygram). Nor did he imagine that the skills he'd picked up in the music business - programming drum machines and keyboards - would lead to him becoming a major player in today's mobile phone and wireless world.

Looking back on those heady days, Jowitt says modestly: "In some ways, it's a bit of an embarrassing claim to fame winning New Faces at the age of 19 in 1975. And in truth we were in all the right places at all the right times, but with the wrong content."

He does himself a disservice. Wild Affair were one of the first bands to use pre-programmed backing tracks when playing live, which is now common in today's dance and rap music. What's more, Jowitt not only had a passion for electronics and programming, but he had the vision to apply it and make a two person band sound like a stadium band. And this was in the days when many musicians frowned upon the very idea of "automation."

Now the head of enhanced multimedia at Orange UK, Jowitt says his music background brings him great insight into how to make products and interfaces easy and intuitive to use - essential in the mobile telephony world.

"Usability can fail miserably, even with the most well-intentioned piece of hardware," says Jowitt. "You can end up with buttons that are crucial to usability being embedded six menu steps down and four menu steps to the right. But being both a software designer and a long-time user means I spot usability issues that should be blatantly obvious, but more often than not go unnoticed."

Cyber emotion

Jowitt and his team are responsible for text-to-speech services at the Orange UK division. He says the software involved is "quirky," but leaves a good deal of room for innovation.

"Recently, we've been working on adding emotion into the text-to-speech engine," he relates. "We've inserted real human sounds such as breathing, coughs, and throat clearing. Suddenly, what was a flat 2D sound becomes almost alive."

To do this Jowitt again draws on his past experience as a musician.

"The method we use to insert audio goes back to my recording days. It's not rocket science. But it takes someone who has 'been there and done that' to see how it can be applied in modern telephony."

Ring tones

Jowitt and his colleagues are also working as consultants in the mobile phone ring tone field. There is currently a range of handsets that support MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), which is the accepted specification for the external control of electronic musical instruments. Back in his music days, Jowitt worked extensively with MIDI and turned robotics-engineering computers into sampled drum machines with MIDI. These drum machines were used by the Eurhythmics (on "Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This") and by the Thompson Twins.

Jowitt is also working with Thomas Dolby, one of the doyens of intelligent 1980s pop music, who is now big in ring tones.

"For almost every handset you purchase, you're also buying a Thomas Dolby engine that converts MIDI sounds and samples back into audio sounds," says Jowitt. "So it's all come full circle. All the old musical background is suddenly de rigueur when it comes to ring tones!"

Currently Jowitt's division are creating ring tones that sound like well-known TV themes and chart hits. Plus they are sampling real animal sounds and the songs of rare birds.

Voice powered

Jowitt and his team are also keenly aware of impending legislation that will outlaw use of mobile phones with your hands while driving.

"That legislation will hit like a tidal wave," predicts Jowitt. "That's why we think next year's big thing will be WAP-enabled handsets that are controlled by voice. When a wider set of voice-activated services are available, people will be able to synchronize with their Outlook Calendar by voice commands. Events and to-do items would be read out to them, as would important e-mails."

Jowitt points out that the introduction of voice activated commands has to be done on a piece meal basis because telecommunications companies have a lot of legacy equipment, which is simply not compatible with the latest developments in technology.

People involved in the pop and rock music business might not typically be considered ideal candidates for the corporate world. But often their creative edge is just what is needed to create products that capture the public imagination.

"There's very definitely room for creative people in the corporate world," says Jowitt. "The whole pop and rock ethos is about breaking rules, which some might see as bad. But it can also be seen as positive in that you've got people 'thinking out of the box' and that almost always leads to innovation, which is the life blood of any business."

Plain Words editorial
4 Nov 2003

Another pop star opts for "conventional career"

Steely Dan guitar great also works on spy-satellite technology

Doobie Brothers and Steely Dan guitar great Jeff "Skunk" Baxter has become a player in the U.S. intelligence community. Not only is he an adviser to Congress on antiballistic missile systems, he's also a consultant to the Missile Defence Agency and to various organisations in the intelligence community. He works with the National Mapping and Imagery Agency (NIMA) on spy-satellite technology in Washington, specialising in technologies for future warfare.

Baxter also works in the Los Angeles Police Department Anti-terrorism Unit as a reserve officer. In his "spare time", he's recording his first solo CD and remains a sought-after studio musician on other artists' albums.

The pairing of two such diverse careers might seem odd to some. But Baxter thinks they're extremely compatible. "There's something really cleansing about working on a record with somebody for five days and flying back to D.C. to work with NIMA," he says. "It keeps your perspective fresh. The bottom line is that I really love my country, I'm extremely lucky to have had success as a musician, and only because I live in a free country was I able to do that." Read more...

Plain Words editorial
4 Nov 2003